


Arm Ah Knee

by misslonelyhearts



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: CACW, Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-23
Updated: 2016-09-23
Packaged: 2018-08-16 22:14:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8119531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misslonelyhearts/pseuds/misslonelyhearts
Summary: bucky needs a jacket.  doesn't want the one he got.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [runsinthefamily](https://archiveofourown.org/users/runsinthefamily/gifts).



_Bucharest_  
  
It turned cold two days ago and he needs a jacket.  
  
He coulda stolen one.  But stealing’s on the list, halfheartedly, sure, but it’s in the book, in ink, back at The Shithole.  Don’t do that anymore.  Not even a jacket.  
  
It’s warm inside the warehouse, even with the loading dock doors rolled open.  It’s muggy with bodies, maybe sixty of ‘em, mostly homeless–like he is, but not really–in shades of stinking brown.  They shuffle around two dozen long tables bowing under the weight of donated clothing.   
  
 **LUAȚI GRATUIT**  
  
He looks down from the wire-strung sign to hunt through the crap for something he needs.  
  
At the far end of the last table, he finds a jacket that’d fit the bill.  Like an idiot, he reaches for it with his left hand.  Another comes down on top of it, gripping briefly.  He snatches his hand back and steps away slowly, sidling along the table.  Glancing from under his cap, he analyzes the threat.  Touched a glove, that’s all.  But he’d done more than that.  He’d felt what was underneath.    
  
The man is huge.  At least a head taller than Bucky. Gray hair, gray beard, big gnarly mitts, smudgy opaque black specs, dirty cane dangling from a wrist strap.  Maybe blind, maybe not.  The posture is military.  The gut is not.  Even in Romania, many homeless are vets.    
  
 _Shoulda seen this place in ‘43, Buck-a-roo.  Could take him now, just as easy._  He squeezes his eyes shut, opens them, and finds the huge man facing him, holding the jacket they’d both fixed on.  He leans toward Bucky like a granite obelisk.  
  
“Pardon me, may I trouble you to tell me…what size am I holding?”    
  
English. British. Smells like Sherlock Holmes probably would’ve.  
  
He doesn’t have to comply, doesn’t even have to be of basic fucking help.  All he’s gotta be is smart.  Instead, he’s dropping the needle down on What Would Barnes Do?  He peers at the label.  
  
ARMANI.   
  
Are Manny.   
  
Incorrect.    
  
Stupid mope, how many times you pooled your pennies with Steve for spumoni at L&B? It’s Italian, knucklehead.  Arm- _ah_ -knee.  A hundred-year-old headache yawns awake at the base of his skull.  And it’d be real swell if, for once, his brain didn’t-  
  
Italian clothing brand. Encountered in 1991, inside suit collar belonging to Target: _Stark, Howard Anthony Walter_.  Target: _Stark, Maria Collins Carbonell_ clothing brand unknown. Christ on a cracker, does it fucking matter? Flowers, maybe, on her blouse.    
  
That was blood, pal.

The man’s leonine head turns, waiting, offering his ear.  A man who’s not standing on a grim, yellowy patch of road with a woman’s throat in his hand, but here, in Bucharest.  
  
“It’s, uh.” Bucky swallows, checks to see who’s watching them. But their end of the table is empty of looky-loos. “The label’s cut out. I dunno.”  
  
“What do you think, then?  Will it fit me?”  
  
 _What Would Barnes-_  
  
“Only if you lay off the amandine for a coupla years.”  
  
Ice water floods through Bucky.  What the hell is he saying?   
  
Below the twin black moons of his glasses, the man grins deeply.  His laugh is silent, but it twitches throughout his girth.  Cold shifts to hot wasp stings under Bucky’s skin and he tugs his cap lower, checks the exits.  When his eyes sketch back to the huge Brit, he’s holding the jacket out.  
  
“Take it, friend.”  
  
He does. But only because he needs it, and that’s What-  
  
“Thanks,” he says with no one’s voice.  
  
The huge Brit ticka-tacks his cane down the opposite end of the table.    
  
He doesn’t want what he’s holding, the jacket with the ARMANI that won’t shut up.  But he has to _getthehellouttahere_ , and there aren’t any others that fit, or fit the need: Dark fabric, pockets, double-stitching.  He needs warmer duds.  He can need something and not want it, that’s okay.  That’s one way to live.    
  
That’s government cheese, kiddo.  
  
Outside, around the corner, he quickly stuffs his arms in the jacket.  Settled, warmer, a little more comfortably invisible despite the raging thumper of a headache.  He checks both ends of the alley.   _Copacetic_.  Something growls from the middle of his body, angry enough to echo.  There’re granola bars back at The Palais du Shit.  Bucky grimaces. He needs fruit, vitamins.   
  
C’mon, now, be real.  His lips are cold when he licks them.  It’s okay to want to put teeth and tongue around something that’s not…preserved.  He wants it– _he does_ –and that’s something. That’s okay.  
  
Whoever he is, he’s wearing goddamn Armani now, and he can chance a mission to the market.  
  
See what’s fresh.

**Author's Note:**

> so, this is because i was looking up the Bucharest outfit. and though it's not clear exactly what brand of jacket bucky's wearing in those scenes, the closest match online was a fucking $400 Armani jacket. @runsinthefamily and i had a laugh about it, thinking about the most likely scenario in which bucky'd end up in Armani while he's evading every security force under the sun. then this happened.


End file.
